Laura Jogani

Jun 04, 2026

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Why Trust Companies Keep Losing What They Know

Early in my career at JP Morgan, I needed information about a specific trust. Details about distribution standards, successor trustees, provisions that mattered for a client situation we were navigating. The trust officer who knew that account inside and out was on vacation. Two weeks out.

We waited.

That moment stuck with me, not because it was a crisis, but because it was so ordinary. It happened all the time, at one of the largest, most sophisticated financial institutions in the world. The information existed. It just lived in a person, not a system. And when that person wasn’t there, the team was stuck.

Years later, working closely with trust companies across the country, I can tell you that problem hasn’t gone away. It’s just become more expensive.

The bottleneck that shouldn’t exist

The scenario is familiar to anyone who’s worked in trust administration. A colleague is out. A client calls with a question. Someone needs a piece of information about an account, where a document is, what the distribution standards are, who the successor trustee is. And without the right person in the room, the answer is: we’ll get back to you.

That bottleneck doesn’t need to exist in 2026. But it persists because the systems trust companies rely on weren’t designed to eliminate it. CRMs are useful once information gets into them. The problem is the step before that — the inconsistent, manual process of extracting information from trust documents and getting it somewhere useful in the first place.

Manual workflows make the problem worse

Most trust companies still rely on manual document review workflows – trust officers reading through documents and recording key information in Word files, email threads, or spreadsheets. The information gets captured, but inconsistently. Different trust officers pull out different details. Formats vary. Summaries from five years ago look nothing like summaries from last year.

The result is an information environment that’s technically documented but practically difficult to use. When a new team member needs to get up to speed on an account, there’s no clear starting point. When a trust officer needs to revisit a document they haven’t touched in two years, they’re essentially starting over.

And when someone leaves (a reality every growing trust company faces) they take institutional knowledge with them that no offboarding process fully captures.

A centralized platform changes the equation

The answer isn’t more diligent documentation habits, it’s infrastructure that makes consistent documentation the path of least resistance.

When trust document reviews happen on a centralized platform (with standardized prompts, stored summaries, and structured family trust profiles), knowledge stops living in individuals and starts living in the organization. A new trust officer can pull up an account and immediately see a complete, accurate summary of the trust document, built from the same framework every other account uses. They don’t need to ask around or find the right person. The information is there.

This matters most in three specific moments:

1. Staff turnover. When a trust officer leaves, their accounts don’t become a mystery. Structured summaries and stored document reviews mean the transition is manageable, not painful.
2. Team growth. New hires can reach professional effectiveness faster when they have a consistent knowledge base to work from on day one –  not a collection of disparate files to decipher.
3. Day-to-day coverage. When someone is out, their colleagues can handle client questions confidently because the information they need is accessible, not locked in someone’s memory or buried in a folder.

Less that falls through the cracks

There’s another dimension to this that’s easy to underestimate: the errors of omission. When information isn’t captured consistently, things get missed – not because trust officers are careless, but because manual processes are inherently imperfect. Important details don’t make it into the summary. A provision that matters doesn’t get flagged. A follow-up that should happen doesn’t.

Standardized, AI-assisted workflows reduce those gaps. When every document review follows the same structured prompt  covering the same 40 to 50 questions every time, the probability that something important gets overlooked goes down significantly. The system isn’t perfect, but it’s consistently thorough in a way that manual workflows simply can’t match.

For trust companies navigating growth, staff transitions, and increasing client complexity, that consistency isn’t just operationally convenient. It’s a risk management story.

The knowledge that runs through a trust company is too valuable to live in people’s heads. The trust companies pulling ahead right now aren’t just hiring better people — they’re building better systems.

If you’re thinking about what that looks like in practice, our guide Modernizing Trust Company Operations walks through exactly how top trust companies are solving this problem today. 

The information provided here does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. It is provided for general informational purposes only. This information may not be updated or reflect changes in law. Please consult with an estate attorney, financial advisor, or tax professional who can advise as to your particular situation.